For the overwhelming majority of retailers, the festive season is make or break. Christmas and New Year 2024 may have delivered surprisingly buoyant top-line revenues, given the consumer cost-of-living crisis, but profitability was another matter. The result has been another crop of high-profile failures, including Ted Baker, Matchesfashion, the Body Shop and FarFetch. Retailers account for 9% of all UK
The retail sector is crucial to the UK economy. It generates 6% of our GDP, receives a third of all consumer spending and employs 2.9m people (around 10% of all employment). Yet, it accounts for 9% of insolvencies and, as our latest sector report identifies, a further worrying decline in its overall financial health in recent months. Just at this
Manufacturing was once the bedrock of the economy and the source of the UK’s rise to economic superpower status in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since Margaret Thatcher unceremoniously re-shaped the economic landscape in the 1980s, the sector has shrunk from 25% of GDP in 1979 to 16% in 1990 and to just 9% now. In the process it has
The UK economy appears to be on a slow upward trajectory in 2024 after a rocky start and on the back of a tough business landscape in 2023. We hope this trend continues and improves as UK business owners desperately need some stability and growth. Delving deeper into April’s stats, there was mixed news with a pleasant surprise in the
Current financial pressures In a letter to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ahead of the March 2024 budget, the Local Government Association (LGA) said that councils were facing significant shortfalls because of cost and demand pressures: “Our analysis shows that by 2024/25 cost and demand pressures will have added £15bn (28.6%) to the cost of delivering council services since 2021/22. Despite increased
The signs are that the worst of the cost of living crisis may be over for consumers, with CPI inflation at 3.4% in February now well below the rise in average pay of 6.1% for those in work. Pensioners have seen a huge hike of 8.5% and most benefits have been uprated by 6.7%. If only the situation facing businesses
